Temper, Temper
by Luna Tiger
Summary: Honorshipping, Falkner x Morty // Yin and Yang never found each other so horribly before.


**Title**: Temper, Temper  
**Fandom**: Pokémon  
- _Characters_: Falkner, Clair, Morty (Honorshipping = MortyxFalkner)  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Summary**: _Yin and Yang never found each other so horribly before._  
**Notes**: 8D I can't write fluff to save my life! (And it only took TWO YEARS to finish!)

- b - e - g - i - n -

In their great big blue world, many things were known as legendary. Legendary pokémon, legendary cities, legendary people. All had acquired fame through birth, history, or long-forged reputations, built on by stories or reports, myths and fables. Each stacked and stacked, surrounded by the ordinary to enhance and embrace the splendor of their fame. But legends weren't always wives-tales or ancient history. The land where Legends Were Born had its own phenomenal force in the modern world, its own unique, intangible curse laid down upon one.

And it ran through a room with the power of a tornado.

"I think your interior decorator ripped you off."

"Don't even try, Clair," came the ragged warning, conjoined with vague eye-contact. "Don't even."

Barely a whole object remained intact on the floor, in piles, in tatters, in shards or chunks. And the Violet City Gym Leader sat in the center, haloed by his own destructive nature as he rocked back and forth in out-worldly anxiety and agitation. It wasn't anything in the room he was bothered with. Clair frowned sternly. "What did you do."

"It wasn't me--"

"_What did you do_?"

"It isn't my fault, Clair!"

"I'm not leaving until--"

"High christening, _what does it look like_?!" His hair was in disarray; she could see both eyes open and wide and furious. "I lost my temper! Unless you hadn't noticed I just finished tearing the room apart!"

From even in the doorway, the tear tracks on his cheeks were visible in the dim light. Clair had the feeling he hadn't even known he'd cried at all. "Falkner." She took cautious steps closer, over and around pieces of glass and clay. "Will you talk to me? Tell me what happened?"

He was silent, then nodded his head to bow, staring at his lap and Clair relaxed some, coming ever more closer and dropping to one knee before him, after clearing aside some poor inorganic casualties. But the silence persisted long enough for her to push him. "So? What's going on?"

"...We fought," he admitted, clawing his fingers back through his hair. "We...I-- we had a fight."

"About what?"

Pause. A crooked, empty smile emerged and Falkner's quiet bark was awful. "I don't even remember. But it made me angry, so I left before I started breaking things."

She frowned. Clair had seen this particular behavior before; she was no stranger to Falkner's hair-trigger. But he wasn't a child anymore. This couldn't continue. "You should really stop running away when your temper kicks in."

He snorted. "Oh, I'm sure that would have solved _everything_." He glared, both eyes still quite visible. "Let's stay and keep arguing about something I can't recall at the moment, until I snap and, in turn, _hit him_ instead of something that doesn't have feelings and bones and blood I can spill. Excellent! I love your thinking!"

Clair stared, unfazed by the sarcasm. She's seen _that_ too. "I've seen you keep your temper in check. Whatever happened this time was a fluke. It's not something to get drastic about."

"No, I don't care anymore. I can't-- I'm done. I'm gonna break it off." Suddenly, his whole body sagged, possibly at the realization of what he just said. And even then, more tiredly, "I'm going break it off."

Clair hissed and leaned closer. "No you aren't," she growled. "You're being stupid now. You're gonna go back, make-up, and do whatever it takes to make your relationship work. I won't let you go ruin the best thing that ever happened to you."

"Who are you kidding?!" Falkner leaned forward as well, forcing Clair to sit back as he got _too_ close. "You expect me to try and keep going when I find out I won't distinguish him from anything else?! Do I have to say it, Clair? Do I have to explain to you that if I wasn't here, I'd be there, doing to him what I did to this room?! What makes you think I can live with that?! He's the _last_ thing I'd ever want to harm!"

He was being unreasonable. Clair pursed her lips, undecided on how to proceed. Falkner had a temper; he'd had it for as long she'd known him, though back then, it wasn't as frequent. She had theories, though may she never divulge them, as they all implicated the source as being his mother. But in the interest of the long run, Falkner had a point, as misguided and desperate as it appeared. But so did she: there was a great amount of feelings between them.

Morty was, in her opinion (that was shared among others), the best hope for Falkner's well-being. He was calm and mellow where Falkner was not, he wasn't easily offended by the words of others, and most importantly, there was an equal amount of attraction. They _fit_. For reasons beyond just those it seemed. And Clair wasn't about to let it fall apart because one half of the equation was self-doubting himself. "It's going to hurt, if you break it off."

"Yeah, it's going to hurt! But it's going to hurt a lot worse if we continue."

Clair exhaled and rose to stand straight. "Get up."

He eyed her critically, lips already twisting into a faint sneer, but then he seemed to think better of whatever he had in mind. Falkner crept to his feet at a snail's pace; Clair had to wonder how much effort he was exerting. He had to be tired. "So?" he murmured. "Now what?"

She touched him. Both of her hands fell to the sides of his neck, cradling his head and enveloping it with a relieving chill on his far-too-warm skin. He closed his eyes with a sigh and Clair felt a fraction of herself relax. "You're going to rest," she ordered quietly. "You're going to sleep tonight off and talk to Morty when you wake up. Is that fair?"

Falkner's answer wasn't immediately forthwith, his body still under her hold. An indiscriminate amount of time passed before he bothered to open his eyes and ask with finality, "How are you even here, Clair?"

Clair replied with a repeat of her own question. "Is that _fair_?"

He nodded as if numb and Clair pulled him out of the eye of his storm, tugging him gently toward the door without yield or resistance. Past the entrance of the room, Falkner's first step outside of it, he fell into a slumber not of his own doing, and Clair exchanged a shaky smile with someone Falkner hadn't know to be there.

"Take care of him."

- t - i - m - e -

He woke up to fingers touching his cheek, light caresses Falkner turned into without caring who was behind them, but at the same rationalized it could only be one of a few people he allowed this close to him. No one else would _dare_, not without consequence. It was safe and Falkner opened his eyes.

Morty's upside-down visage confused him momentarily, before realizing it wasn't a pillow under his head, but a lap. Not a bad way to start the day ordinarily, but after last night-- "Good morning."

Falkner groaned softly in reply, shifting about his body, but not finding the will to sit up. Lethargy was unbecoming of a priest, he knew, but everything simply ached under his skin. And the continual caress was more than bearable. He'd have to live with remaining prone. "What are you doing here?"

Morty didn't answer; Falkner didn't press it. But the longer he was touched, the more it became uncomfortable. His words last night haunted him, his conviction to fulfill a break-up awkwardly becoming harder the longer he lay there. But then a thumb was carefully etching over the scars of his right eye, the one beneath and the two above, and it was painfully clear: no one would touch them again.

Not because anyone would be afraid to touch them; scars were taboos you wanted permission to indulge in. Having access to slices of time living frozen on one's skin was a sign of trust, when the scars had a history of being painful to relive. Someone would want to, likely, if he were single again.

But this intimacy, this trust, the bond he had right now was a one-off. If he could not stick with Morty _now_, or Morty could not stick with him, then that said everything Falkner needed: he would never allow someone so close again. Not if his anger was not under control.

His face tightened in remorse, already feeling like he was about to drown in the tears that had barely just started forming.

"Shhh," Morty said softly. "Stop thinking."

"You shouldn't be here," he rasped. He rolled his body over, his scars now pressed into the denim of Morty's pants, and tried, in vain, to suppress all of last night from his mind.

"Are you mad that I am?"

His heart skipped a beat and Falkner pushed himself up on his hands, frightfully crying out "No!" as Morty's hands reappeared back on him, cupping his face with a tenderness Falkner felt he did not deserve. But gravity took over, and all that had been waiting to spill from his eyes did so. Where tears fell, brushing over Morty's thumbs, a chilled warmth followed, reaching over his skin and into his muscles with a slow but methodical pace. And when it reached his chest, the feeling unfurled his lungs and heart from their constriction, leaving behind the ache of relieved stress. He closed his eyes at Morty's faint smile. "Feel better now?"

"What did you do?"

"Something I prayed would work on you when it failed others before."

Falkner wanted to fall back down and sleep. Whatever great monster had been tearing him apart from the inside out was gone in a torrent of a calming balm. "Is that a part of your psychomancy?"

Morty hmmed, neither affirming nor denying. Falkner rationalized that it didn't matter, regardless. Morty leaned forward, precariously balancing his weight to not knock either of them over, and said, "You can get angry all you want. I just won't let you stay that way."

The sound Falkner answered with sounded suspiciously like a sob, and one hand flew up to cover his mouth, as if that would prevent the escape from ever happening to begin with. He blushed, and looked at him sheepishly. Morty's smile widened a fraction, and whispered, "That's okay," before leaning to kiss him.


End file.
